Ten rules for succeeding in academia through upward toxicity

Cultivate powerful friends. Gain power over as many publication organs and scholarly bodies as possible and use them to promote your clique.

Do nothing for anyone unimportant.

Find a less successful scholar who will fear and admire you. Flatter them into becoming your sidekick and count on them to denigrate your colleagues and defend your reputation.

Crush the confidence of students with the potential to surpass you. Or sleep with them. Or both.

Manipulate students and employees into feeling they owe you, long after you no longer have power over them. Make outrageous, unethical promises they will feel bad about accepting or refusing.

Promote a zero-sum model of success. Anyone else’s gain is your loss. Claim your students’ work as your own and reassign their best ideas to your favourites. Collaboration is for losers.

Systematically badmouth your colleagues so you can improve your own standing. Shut out the students of rival scholars. Mock those rivals for having less successful students.

Gaslight and spread misinformation about anyone who stands up to you. Complain about the “rumour mill” and “witch-hunts”. Accuse your critics of jealousy. 

Ask loudly why no one is willing to come forward officially to substantiate the rumours of abuse against you. If someone overcomes their terror, call them crazy.

Lie brazenly. Accuse others of lying.

From: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ten-rules-succeeding-academia-through-upward-toxicity